Abstract

The primary aim of this work on Hobbes is to present a new construction of his moral and political views. I argue for a reading of the text which dramatically recasts his theory as a deontological contractarianism rather than a consequentialist contractarianism. This reading of the text pays serious attention to Hobbes's usually neglected rejection of prudential calculation and his commitment to the method of Reason which he explains as what we would now call analytical deduction from the meaning of words. ;I argue for the centrality of three theses: that obligation arises from assent, that there is always an obligation to obey the Laws of Nature, and that one is obliged to obey one's sovereign. In explicating Hobbes's theory I present a more complex picture of the authorization of the sovereign than is standardly given in the accounts that characterize the sovereign as the third party beneficiary of a contract between individuals in the State of Nature. Instead, my complex account depicts the sovereign as a duty bound contractor with obligations to the commonwealth. Furthermore, I contend that Hobbes's distinction between the natural and the artificial can be seen to organize and explain important elements in his view. ;Parts 3 and 4 of Leviathan, where Hobbes discusses the obligation of Christian citizens to their civil sovereign and the supposed powers of the Kingdom of Darkness, are then used as a test for verifying the coherence and validity of my novel interpretation. Because my reading of the first two parts of Leviathan conforms with the ideas and method presented in parts 3 and 4, I conclude that the deontic reading, and not the egoist reading, best captures Hobbes's intended meaning. I then go on to defend my interpretation against today's most prominant advocates of the egoist readings, Gauthier, Hampton and Kavka. ;In the final chapter of this work I present three arguments on currently important moral questions: benevolence, infidelity, and abortion. These arguments, which all employ what I have shown to be the Hobbesian approach, show the usefulness of Hobbes's theory in addressing contemporary questions of ethics